


Favor

by pridecookies



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Break Up Talk, Closure, Comfort/Angst, Fluff and Angst, Healing, M/M, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:21:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28809549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pridecookies/pseuds/pridecookies
Summary: Post DAI, Malcolm Hawke goes to Tevinter and runs into Fenris, who he hasn't seen in almost a decade.And who like, fucking broke him as a person. : ' )
Relationships: Anders/Hawke (Dragon Age), Anders/Male Hawke, Fenris/Hawke (Dragon Age), Fenris/Male Hawke
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Favor

**Author's Note:**

> This does reference the other fics I have written for this pair because mEMoRiES

Leaning on the table, shoulders hunched over in a laden way, Malcolm looked at the documents that had been brought over. Maps of Tevinter’s underground, potential allies in slaving cities, names upon names upon names of men and women and children sold like cattle to be used as servants to magisters and the ruling classes. Killed, employed as sacrifices. It weighed on him the way it did years ago when he loved a freed yet shackled elf. Malcolm tensed at the thought, tethered by the silver on his left hand but aching all the same. 

It was another loose end, a string unraveled that was held in his eye line that he could never find a place for. Magnolia was tied now to him. Held fast in her own way in the specific kind of possession their love allowed. Anders was his fully, he was fully Anders’ in a way that was unshakable and binding. Fenris never quite removed himself from Malcolm’s heart. Lyrium lines were faded in their branding, they didn’t light up the way they used to. He didn’t feel shattered by him. But love brands regardless, in whatever form. Whether it was in the past, whether he was in it now, whether it was undefined. It always branded where it touched. Scarred.

Dorian was pacing, speaking into the air and the other advisors of the resistance they had created listened. Malcolm heard very little of it. This was part of the world he continued with the Inquisition, something he craved for more reasons than one. He wanted to see Tevinter, his kind superior. What it felt like. That in itself was surreal. It was both beautiful and terrible to behold.

Freedom prompted a cruelty that he understood because he had known it in himself. Belief that he was better. That magic made him better. It was never voiced out loud but it was in his blood, blood shed and blood veiling around him to feed that feeling. It made him shiver. Pieces of himself Anders didn’t love. Couldn’t love. Because they were so oppositional to healing. They hurt on purpose without purpose. They were the parts of him that relished in violence.

Fenris was part of the Inquisition’s efforts, Varric had brought him in because his own were already known in the underground of the Imperium. The  _ Blue Wraith _ , they called him. Malcolm had heard in Skyhold and he knew then that he would be here, in this room. It called to him, drew him out. It wasn’t desire, it wasn’t that kind of love that whispered for him to look backwards. Those no longer held fast to him with Fenris. His heart was full, filled to overflowing with gold and pitch. But there was something he wanted to find in the elf’s eyes, something he looked for in all the years and moments and casual slips of fingers under the table. He wanted to find it now and feel the peace of knowing it was there. He wanted to look.

As Dorian spoke, his words felt blurred like listening underwater. Until he turned and smiled at the door, at another entrance of another member of their effort.    


“There you are,” the altus purred, “I was beginning to think we had frightened you off.”

“Apologies,” the voice spoke. Malcolm’s hands pressed harder into the table. “I was delayed.”

Hearing his voice, its timber steady and deep, Malcolm stood up straight and turned, eyes latching immediately onto the elf and the guarded expression on his face. Fenris looked back, the two both angry and not, unsure but not, aching but not. Staring at each other.

“Leave us,” Malcolm said quietly. The council gave him a questioning look and Dorian a raised brow. He had become good friends with the altus. Dorian was aware of their past. He knew it would need to be addressed if they were going to bring Fenris into their effort alongside the Champion. Malcolm responded to their silent inquiry with certainty, a cold expectation. Unmoved and refusing to be denied. It was not a request of the council. He was commanding them. 

They shuffled out of the room and Malcolm returned to his position of leaning over the table, shoulders shaking slightly, mouth dry. Fenris had not removed his gaze from Malcolm since he had entered the room. With a breath, in through his nose and weighted, the blood mage turned and looked at him again. Really looked at him. What he saw was... _ so much _ . 

Time had changed them both. Malcolm still looked the same, save for the usual signs of age that occur over a decade. Hair still messy, still flopped on its own without apology. He still wore greys instead of colors because the world was often so. Still shoved his hands in his pockets too much, hiding inside the small enclosure of fabric. Fenris looked different though. Wildly. 

White hair that used to cover his eyes was cut short, shaved on the sides and left longer on top. The armor of Tevinter was gone now, he wore something a rogue often would. Jacket, pants, a scarf around his neck. He felt less like someone’s ornament and more like a ghost than ever. 

The elf stared at him the way he always had. Confusion riddled his features, guarded and vulnerable and wild. Like a wolf forced into a cage.

Malcolm did what he used to, he opened the world inside a small room so Fenris had the space he needed to breathe. Blue eyes beckoning with kindness and a love that had lit him on fire when he was twenty six-years old and scared. Malcolm wasn’t twenty-six anymore. He was married, he was settled. Malcolm was healed in ways he couldn’t have been then. But in the wide and green of eyes he searched desperately for so long, he unveiled himself at twenty-six.

He let memory ink in. Words he had said. Moments. Memories.

_ You remind me of a frost spell, Fenris. _

It was like being hit in the back of the head with a wooden board, struck stupid with it. Bad jokes and desperate attempts to flirt on a job. Visits to the Hanged Man and Wicked Grace and brushes with fingers under the table.

_ I will need you to explain that, mage. _

Teaching him to read, fire flickering softly and illuminating something in them both that was warmer than the embers inside it. Fenris falling asleep on his shoulder. The way he lit up brightly when the elf walked in the room. Sharing that with Mags because he couldn’t share it with Anders. Kisses so brief and so cruel and kind at once. 

_ When you cast it, you can solidify something that was dynamic before. It freezes, cold soaks into it and what was strong is brittle. Easy to break with the slightest effort. That’s you. _

The way Malcolm trembled when he touched him the first time. The only time. He was never allowed another. Wrapping red around his wrist because he wanted to keep him.

_ You think I’m breakable? _

But he couldn’t. Fenris didn’t want to be kept. Fenris didn’t know what he wanted. 

_ No, Fenris. Not you. Me. You shatter me. _

Malcolm remembered loving him. 

Then, there was the death of that. The mourning that fell on Malcolm, the grief that coated his life like tar. Waiting to say goodbye, illuminated by firelight and dressed to tell the mage that he couldn’t. He offered nothing more because he had nothing more to give him.

_ You are too drunk for this conversation, Malcolm. _

In giving him nothing he gave Malcolm everything. Being confused, scared and unsure, begging Isabela to heal him in a way he could understand. Touch him because touch was what hurt.

_ Fenris, I have to be drunk for this conversation or I won’t survive it. _

There was a party and there was a chair and there was a bloody nose and there was a moment where he wondered if he would ever feel anything good ever again. Hands that shook as he banged on his door and pleaded for a  _ why _ .

_ You have never been that fragile. _

Wanted so badly to know what he did wrong. Believing so strongly that it wasn’t what it did. It was him.  _ Malcolm  _ was wrong. He was spoiled. He was spoiled. He was spoiled. Wasn’t enough, was too much. Screaming in a forest. Trees leveled. Shaking like the tempest he was.

_ You’re right, I haven’t. That should tell you how important you—Maker, Fenris. I should have known your love would feel like grief... _

Malcolm remembered hating him. 

He searched Fenris for the thing he had come to Tevinter to see, in more ways than one. The thing he looked for in wide green eyes for years and never found. The thing he begged at that door for with a love he didn’t understand. Maker...it was there now.  _ It was finally there _ . He could see it in Fenris’ face. The blood mage softened, tears threatening to spill over at the sight.

“Fenris,” Malcolm breathed, “Freedom looks so beautiful on you.”

Fenris took in a breath, sharply, and his guard fell. Malcolm always did that, unarmed him with gentleness. Patience. Waiting, silently. Asking to be let in. He looked away from the mage, his jaw flexed. Pausing, looking back, he opened his mouth to speak but offered nothing. He swallowed again. Then, he spoke weakly. 

“I was free when I saw you last.”

“No, Fen,” Malcolm said with love in every word, “You weren’t.” He smiled, “You are now.”

Fenris watched him, eyes twitching, blinking. He knew what the mage meant. Hatred shackled him then, bound him and enslaved him in a way he couldn’t escape.  _ Then _ . Not anymore.

“Thank you,” he muttered.

Hands still in his pockets, breath pulling into his lungs and sitting shallow in his chest, Malcolm walked toward him. Very slowly, every step measured and sure and cautious. Fenris’ breath picked up. Not because he felt threatened, not because he was afraid. But because he was confused. There was so much anger there, for so many years. There was a death they mourned, there was a song that Malcolm was singing that Fenris couldn’t hear and understand and the cries of Kirkwall made it dissonant when he tried to join in. He looked over the mage, blinking rapidly. Malcolm stopped several steps from him, allowing him to recenter again. Let the little wolf pace. The bird didn’t mind. He was flying freely. 

Malcolm rubbed his mouth and Fenris watched, picking up the promise encircling his finger immediately and returning his gaze to Malcolm’s eyes. 

“You got married,” he said, surprised. 

With a grin, warm and encouraging and devastatingly happy, he nodded, “I got married.”

Fenris shifted, his disbelief apparent, “I would not have imagined that for you.”

“Most things in my life feel unimaginable, Fen,” Malcolm chuckled, a weakness in it.

At that, Fenris nodded, eyes asking the question silently and Malcolm closing his eyes a moment in response, sucking breath in again. 

“He is not here, I hope,” Fenris said flatly and Malcolm shook his head in denial. 

“No,” the mage supplied, “He’s in Denerim.”

“Sane?” Fenris narrowed his eyes.

Malcolm lifted a single brow in warning and Fenris looked away from him again. There was so much that lingered there that was unrelated to them and yet was wrapped up in all the reasons they had been doomed from the start. That dissonant song. Mages. Anders. Kirkwall.

“Fenris,” Malcolm prompted, earnest in his expression, “Are you happy?”

Turning back, he looked up at the mage with wide eyes at the question. Thinking. Swallowing. Settling on the word as he mulled it over in his head. 

“Yes.”

He meant it. 

At the answer, Malcolm softened again. Relaxed, tears pricking again at white corners, obscuring blue. There was a laugh that escaped his chest, he tried to stifle it but joy was present in its thunder. Fenris watched and his lip twitched, eyes still guarded but reaching anyway. Smiling, twitching in it and working to suppress it, Malcolm looked away from him. Up at the ceiling. At the floor. Back at Fenris, truth apparent in the smallness of it. 

“I’m so glad you’re happy,” he said to him, eyes still blurred with the sheen, “I’m  _ so— _ ” he stopped, voice thick with the emotion that prompted those tears, “It’s all I wanted for you.”

With that same look, gaze so wide and so confused and still reaching, Fenris blinked quickly. Mourning crept back in, the way it did almost ten years ago, and Fenris voiced the question that Malcolm himself had begged an answer to in the middle on the night at his doorstep. 

“Did I make you happy, Malcolm,” he asked quietly. 

The mage broke the space between them as the words broke him. Compassion flooded his features as he stepped toward Fenris, closure found in touch as it always was in his life. Gently, taking the elf’s wrists in his and holding them, he bent down and pressed his lips to his forehead. Malcolm blinked so hard that his face hurt, his eyes hurt. His features were scrunched as the sob locked in his chest for years and years released in his expression. 

“Yes, Fenris,” he whispered against his skin, “You made me happy.” 

Shifting, Fenris flipped his arms over slowly so as Malcolm clutched at his wrists, he clutched at Malcolm’s. Shackled with fingers for a moment, shackled to a moment. Memories of a street that was lit with only a lamp and a mage pouring magic into him, illuminating his skin, showing him beauty in the way he was marked. Fenris closed his eyes, eased into the mage. Reaching out in his mind to touch the love that he couldn’t at the time and finding it releasing. 

Lingering there, Malcolm breathed. With each breath, he released his own hurt. With each breath, he set it on a boat and set the boat to drift off to sea. With each breath, he pulled air back into lungs that had once felt like they were drowning in lyrium light. Then, he was free. 

Pulling back, he smiled. Laying a hand on Fenris’ face, he nodded. This was the piece that had been floating, bumping into things, colliding in his head. It was settled now. Freedom found in its proper placement. Healing in the way it hurt. He sucked in breath again, letting out a heaved sigh, that sob released and cleared his throat. 

He removed itself from Fenris and walked toward the door to let the others in. They would be alright now, they could talk about it more later but the extent of the healing needed was found in the silence. But Fenris stopped him. 

“Wait,” he said, closing his eyes like it caused pain to move, “I need to—” He shifted, “Can we speak privately later? I have something for you.”

“Yes,” Malcolm affirmed, brows furrowed. “We can do whatever you need to do.”

Eyes once again softened at the kindness in the mage’s voice. Unexpected, considering the brutality of the arguments they had gotten into in their relationship. At its start, at its middle, at its end. There was always some sort of anger between them. It was gone now. Fenris watched Malcolm and the shift in him. He was not the man he was in Kirkwall. He stood straighter, he felt lighter. Unburdened. Grief slipped off. Perhaps the healer did his job well.

“I lied to you, before,” Fenris admitted, “I said I didn’t have it. I do.”

It was Malcolm’s turn now to give the elf a confused look, his own eyes widened and probing. “You—” he stopped, a gasp leaving his throat, mingled with a weak laugh, “You have it. Still.”

Fenris looked at his feet and Malcolm looked at Fenris. Anger was again what the elf expected. He didn’t get it. Something about this knowledge healed Malcolm the way a not too long ago admission had, from a woman he had known for a decade and was just now starting to understand. The comfort of knowing that he had not loved alone, had not nursed memories that wisped into his morning like fog. Fenris did too. It mattered. It was not wasted. 

Swallowing, Fenris looked up at him, “You never told me what it meant.”

“I know,” Malcolm murmured, “but it doesn’t matter. It isn’t for you anymore. It’s for Anders. I need to keep that for myself.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, “I can’t.” 

Nodding, the elf aware of the power of those two words, he remained silent. Then he offered something Malcolm never thought he would see again. Fenris smiled, sadly. But smiled.

“I told you I was a poor gamble.” 

With a laugh, broken and feeble, Malcolm approached him. Memory trickled in again.

_ I had a bad dream, Fenris _ , he had said with heaving breath and he knocked on the elf’s door.

_ It’s over now, Malcolm. _

As he did that night, he laid a hand on his face with one hand still in his pocket. There was a smile on his own lips now, mischievous and encouraging, one he never got to wear around Fenris. They never got there. Every kiss had hurt, for them. From the start.

“Shut up,” he said quietly, as he did then, pressing his lips against his, ghostlike in its lightness. Gentle goodbyes in touch. Pulling back, smile still there, he walked back to the door to let the others in. It would be easier from now on. He closed that box, packed it away. Not because he was afraid of its contents or he was unable to accept they were there.

But because it was over now.


End file.
